A Funeral for a Friend
by FanFicAddict823
Summary: My English teacher last year had us do some sort creative interpretation after we read Lord of the Flies. I chose to write a new scene. I wanted proof that they were civilized and it felt right for Simon to have a funeral. K for safety reasons (implied character death and sadness).


It had been a few days since the boys split into two separate groups, since the night of the feast, since the night that Simon had… since they had…

No, Ralph shook his head, don't think about that. He and Piggy and Samneric had all agreed, none of them had been there that night. None of them had participated in a dance, none of them had seen Simon die, certainly _none_ of them had… had _killed_ Simon.

But they had, and it felt as though they had forgotten something, as though something was missing. And wasn't just him that felt it.

"We should have a funeral." Piggy said as he came up to Ralph.

"A what?"

"A funeral! My auntie says that it's the proper thing to do when someone dies. I've been to one before, for my parents. I was really little, I barely remember it. Or them for that matter, they died in an accident when I was seven. I don't like to talk about them."

"Well, what do we have to do?" Ralph asked.

Piggy seemed very excited, yet he was solemn at the same time. He was about to explain what they needed to do when Samneric came down the beach from the forest. Noticing Piggy's excitement and Ralph's somber, contemplative mood, they decided to ask what was going on.

"Hey guys, what's…"

"… going on?"

Ralph quickly decided to tell the twins what they were talking about. After all, they too had… No, none of them had been there!

"Piggy was just telling me that we should have a funeral for Simon because we… the savages killed him. He was just about to explain how to do that when you two showed up."

"Oh, that's a…"

"…brilliant idea! We've only been to…"

"…one funeral ourselves. It was just the day before we…"

"…we went off to school, our last full day with our parents. You see, our…"

"…pet cat, Tibbles, died that morning. We buried her…"

"…in the backyard, with a little…"

"…grave marker and everything!"

"Wait, if we need to bury the body, don't we need to know where the body is first? I'm pretty sure that the sea claimed Simon's corpse..." Ralph started to say, but then Piggy cut him off.

"Don't worry about that, after the accident, there was nothing left of my parents to bury. Nothing that anyone ever found at least. So instead, we just buried the empty coffins. Coffins are wooden boxes used to hold the dead bodies." Piggy explained, anticipating Ralph's question before he asked it. "Some people don't even bury coffins, some people just put up gravestones in the cemetery. We could just put up a grave, by the sea, near where he…"

"Yeah, yeah it's the least we can do for him. He deserves respect." Ralph said, cutting him off before he could finish that painful thought. To have a proper funeral, they would have to return to that place on the beach, where somehow, as impossible as it would seem, there were _still_ some faint traces of Simon's blood, faded from red to pink with water and sunlight, staining the sand, marring it, perhaps permanently. Though it wouldn't be anywhere _near_ easy for any of the four boys, they knew that it was the right thing to do.

Suddenly, Samneric remembered something, something that begged a question, a question that they felt needed to be answered, and it did. It was a rather important issue with this funeral.

"Do think that we should…"

"…invite the others to the…"

Ralph cut them off there.

"Absolutely not. Now I know that they were once Simon's friends as well as us, but they're nothing but savages now. They probably still say that it was their "beast" that we… that was ki… that died the other night." Ralph spoke with absolute, unquestionable resolution at first, but that resolution wavered when attempting to describe what happened to Simon or "the beast". "I'm not entirely certain that any of them even acknowledge that Simon ever existed in the first place. I wouldn't put it past any of _them_ to deny that the boy who was… murdered… was ever a boy at all, much less their friend."

"Your right, Ralph. It was…"

"…a silly idea."

With that conversation out of the way and having decided and resolved to have a proper funeral for Simon, well, as proper as can be on a deserted island, the four boys set out to the place on the beach near where the feast had been held, the place where Simon's brutal, painful last moments had occurred, the place where their dear friend Simon had ceased to be.

Once the boys arrived at the scene of Simon's violent end, they set about gathering what was needed for the grave marker. Ralph found two pieces of driftwood, one roughly twice as long as the other, which he tied together with the vine that the twins had located up near the edge of the forest. He then stuck it into the ground not right next the sea, but closer to the rock that he had fallen off of, because though the spot next to the sea was the spot Simon had died, it was too close to the ocean, close enough that if the grave marker was put there, it would be lost to the sea within a few hours. By setting it a bit further back, the boys hoped that it survive at least a week, a month if they were lucky.

With the grave marker in place, Piggy started the ceremony.

"We are here today to acknowledge a death, the death of someone dear to us. We are here to acknowledge the death of our good friend, Simon, who has been wrongly stolen from this world before his time. My friends, we are here to pay our respects to he who has been ruthlessly murdered in an act of savagery that we cannot take back, no matter how very dearly we wish that we could. Simon was an amazing friend, an amazing person for as long as we had the pleasure to know him. His was a kind soul, an innocent soul, and he was probably the best friend any of us could have the right to ask for. He was loyal, hardworking, and determined. Simon will be with us forever in our hearts. May he rest in peace and find more happiness in the next life then he did in this one. Good-bye, dear Simon. May you never again be forced to face a horde of crazy savages."

"Good-bye, Simon," the other three chorused. Piggy then took Ralph's spear, which he'd brought in case of an attack by the savages, and carved into the driftwood grave: "R.I.P. - Simon- son, friend, victim of savagery".


End file.
